The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy Read Free Page A

Steve’s is genuine and seals what could potentially be a good partnership. But, as in Salome , the rest mark betrayal, deception, or even impending death. We do not see Frank and Julia kiss at all until the very end, and this is only so Frank can feed himself. The kiss Julia gives Larry is to distract him from investigating the Damp Room, then she shuns his attentions. And the one she shares with her first victim, angrily instigated by him and over in seconds, signals that his end is not far away.
    The final pacts to be made involve Kirsty. Inadvertently, she opens the puzzle box in the hospital, thus unconsciously striking the same deal Frank made at the start. The Cenobites are summoned and verify what she has done. “The box. You opened it. We came,” says their leader. It doesn’t matter that she has done this in ignorance; her curiosity was the catalyst, just as Frank’s desire was his undoing. When Kirsty tells them to “Go to Hell!” the female Cenobite confirms her worst fears: “We can’t. Not alone.” The box has been opened and Kirsty must live up to her end of the bargain. Swiftly, she counters this with a deal of her own, offering them something they crave even more than her: Frank. The lead Cenobite barters from a position of weakness now, in spite of his apparent dominance of the situation. He argues that no one has ever escaped them, but all evidence points to the contrary. We have seen Frank, he has escaped them. The lead Cenobite is forced to contradict himself seconds later, then reluctantly agrees to this new bargain. But they also close their end of the deal with a threat. If Kirsty deceives them they will tear her soul apart!
    Just like the pact between Julia and Frank, this one is wholly unstable—and it is the Cenobites who ultimately double-cross Kirsty. She fulfils her promise and delivers Frank, but that is not enough. They want to take Kirsty back as well, their hunger for her just as great as Frank’s for survival or Julia’s lust. As a result, Kirsty is perfectly within her rights to send them back. They have the one soul as agreed, and so the puzzle box now complies.
    Cotton Family Values
    The second major theme running through Hellraiser is that of the family, or, more correctly, an undermining of the traditional family unit. Hellraiser was by no means the first horror movie to do this, and we can trace the concept back to genre films of the 1960s and ’70s. In earlier U.S. and UK horror films the moral supremacy of the nuclear family and all it stood for tended to be asserted. Heterosexual couples and stable family units fought against threats from the outside, like the overtly supernatural vampire, mummy or werewolf. This can be seen in the Universal and RKO movies of the ’30s and ’40s, and also in certain Hammer productions from the 1950s. By this time, though, American horror films were also considering the danger from within, fueled largely by the fear of communism, classic examples being Invaders from Mars (William Cameron Menzies, 1953) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956). Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) completely internalized the threat, fixing the attention firmly on the mother-son relationship and its effect on Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). As we’ve already seen, Psycho was the first adult horror film Clive Barker ever saw and it had a huge impact on him.
    Other U.S. horror movies that challenged the family’s stabilizing role included Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) and Night of the Living Dead , while The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) remains the epitome of dysfunctional family life: a cannibalistic clan who butcher and eat passersby. Similarly, the stalk and slash films of the late ’70s and ’80s depicted killers who had uneven upbringings: Jason from the Friday the 13th series had a psychotic mother, Michael Myers from Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) was put in a secure psychiatric facility when he was young for